“We should not think of ourselves as Maoris or pakehas, but rather as one people.”
– Labour Prime Minister Walter Nash, Waitangi Day 1960.
Waitangi Day was first officially commemorated in 1934, two years after the Treaty grounds were gifted to the nation by the Governor-General Lord Bledisloe.
During the 1940 centennial celebration of the signing of the Treaty, Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage emphasised national unity and pride.
The 1960 Waitangi Day Act identified February 6 as a National Day of Thanksgiving in commemoration of the signing of the Treaty.
It wasn’t until 1973 that legislation was passed to make it a public holiday. The architect of the law change, Prime Minister Norman Kirk, recognised that New Zealand was now home to people from across the globe – all bound together by common citizenship and love of our country. To ensure the day belonged to everyone irrespective of race or heritage, he renamed it New Zealand Day.
At that first New Zealand Day commemoration on 6 February 1974, he said, “Our future will be what we make of it for ourselves. If we join together in a spirit of co-operation and mutual respect, everything is possible, nothing is beyond us. Let each New Zealand Day stand as a milestone before which we pause and review our efforts and refreshed, press on to build the future.”
Sadly, New Zealand Day was short lived. National Prime Minister Robert Muldoon changed it back to Waitangi Day in 1976, paving the way for it to become a day of grievance and division rather than a celebration of nationhood and unity.
Race, of course, is at the heart of the division within our society. From the earliest of times, different rights have been awarded by race – including a separate electoral roll for those identifying as Maori.
Temporary electoral measures were introduced in the 1860s to ensure Miners and Maori – both disenfranchised by the prevailing property requirements – could vote.
While the Miners’ temporary voting rights were abolished when all adult men got the right to vote in 1879, the Maori seats remained.
However, as a leading constitutional expert, Canterbury University Law Professor Dr Philip Joseph explains, those seats now violate the law:
“The Maori seats contravene the principle of electoral equality – ‘one person, one vote, one value’. Representative democracies must avoid barriers for the representation of minorities. Maori confront no such barriers. In 1867, they did; they failed the property qualification and could not vote. But in 1893 New Zealand moved to a universal adult franchise under which all citizens had the right to vote. Maori are free to compete for parliamentary representation. There are no impediments. The retention of the Maori seats amounts to reverse or indirect discrimination. There is no justification for the difference in treatment.
“For the courts, a discriminatory benefit on racial or ethnic grounds is as unlawful as a discriminatory disadvantage: Discrimination means differential treatment denoting failure to treat all persons equally where there is no reasonable distinction to justify different treatment. The discrimination may be positive, such as conferring a benefit, or negative by imposing a restriction.
“Preferential treatment on grounds of race or ethnicity is discriminatory and ethically wrong. To discriminate on those grounds deeply offends the right to equality of treatment under New Zealand’s human rights legislation”.
The discriminatory impact of the Maori seats is increasing. Not only have the seven Maori seats been radicalised, but with over 30 percent of MPs in Parliament now identifying as Maori – in spite of Maori comprising only 13.2 percent of voters – it is clear they have become an impediment to fair democratic representation.
While no Parliamentary party is currently promising a referendum on the future of the Maori seats, many have done so in the past. Whichever party steps up, is likely to receive considerable support.
In the beginning, New Zealand’s racial division was based on blood quantum. The 1865 Native Lands Act defined Maori as those with 50 percent or more Maori ancestry: “Native shall mean an aboriginal Native of the Colony of New Zealand and shall include all half-castes and their descendants by Natives.”
But over the years the melding of our society into one glorious hotchpotch through rapid intermarriage resulted in a definition change in 1974.
This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator Michael Bassett, a former Labour Minister and backbench MP at that time, explains the background:
“For more than half a century after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840, European migrants to New Zealand were disproportionately men. By the 1920s a substantial proportion of people with Maori ancestry also contained Pakeha blood. If a half caste Maori married another person with even less Maori blood – and huge numbers did – then by law their progeny lost the right to call themselves a Maori. That was what led to a law change in 1974. From the mid-seventies onwards, a Maori was ‘a person of the Maori race and any descendant’. Anyone with a drop of Maori blood could claim to be a Maori.
“Where these developments become farcical, however, is when persons who are largely Pakeha, as most Maori in this country are today, start calling those who have no Maori blood, ‘guests’, or ‘visitors’. The reality is that Maori Party loud mouths are only slightly less foreign than those of us with no Maori ancestry at all.”
As Dr Bassett says, from the mid-seventies, the division between races became increasingly farcical as someone with only a smidgeon of Maori blood could deny their majority non-Maori ancestry to claim an increasingly lucrative array of benefits available only to Maori.
The problem is that this farce, has now been weaponised by Maori sovereignty activists determined to seize control of our country.
Those are the radical tribal separatists who believe “Aotearoa, should be in Maori hands” – including private property.
They are the ones working tirelessly, often within government institutions – and certainly within their Parliamentary Maori Seat power base – to further divide New Zealand along racial lines using culture and their fictional “Treaty partnership” to subvert democracy and gain political control.
In his chilling 1985 book Shadows Over New Zealand, the former unionist Geoff McDonald identified the use of Marxist strategies:
“Marxists understand that the key to destabilising New Zealand is to show how badly the Maori is treated by the whites. The big lie must be built up, until enough people believe it to enable the damage to be done. There is no Maori oppression at all. But that would not stop them from going ahead with their propaganda. Facts or truth have no relevance to Marxism. Anything can be said to help create the conditions amenable to the collapse of society. However absurd or grotesque the charges being made against white New Zealanders, if they are not answered, they will be believed.”
Their strategy is working.
Instead of long-term welfare dependency being seen as the main source of social dysfunction and entrenched poverty in New Zealand, tribal activists claim that for Maori, their problems are caused by racism.
Even though young people are traditionally over-represented in crime statistics, instead of the higher-than-average incarceration of Maori being seen as the result of their belonging to a far younger population cohort than other New Zealanders, tribal activists claim racism within the criminal justice system is to blame.
And instead of factors such as an inadequate diet, lack of exercise, drug and alcohol abuse, and smoking being seen as major contributors to poor health, tribal activists claim that for Maori, racism in the health system is responsible.
With claims of racism being increasingly manufactured by separatists to destabilise our society, it is frightening to reflect on just how close New Zealand came to becoming an apartheid nation.
If Labour had been re-elected in 2023, that would have been our fate.
With the framework for He Puapua – Labour’s blueprint to replace democracy with tribal rule by 2040 – largely in place, the unelected and unaccountable leaders of billion-dollar tribal empires, would, through the right of veto, be running the country.
Tribal totalitarianism would have replaced democracy.
We’d already experienced it in health, when the Maori Health Authority wasted no time at all in declaring race, instead of clinical need, was the key factor in determining treatment priorities.
By now, tribal leaders would be in total control of water – with generous royalties flowing into tribal coffers whenever a Kiwi tap was turned on.
They would have already seized ownership of all public Conservation land – which makes up over a third of New Zealand’s land area.
But wait: although we’ve had a change in government and some of Labour’s racist policies have been reversed, the He Puapua juggernaut is still charging ahead giving tribal leaders increasing control of our country – including it appears, the Conservation Estate.
A Department of Conservation consultation paper on the future of the Conservation Estate indicates that a takeover by tribal interests is already underway.
Presumably with the full support of the Coalition, the Department appears to want to give tribal leaders a controlling interest in decision-making in their proposed new legislation – as concerned New Zealander Fiona Mackenzie warns: “The Department of Conservation’s commitment to engage with iwi as ‘Treaty partners’ highlights the co-governance philosophy that has been so rapidly undermining our democracy and economic productivity.”
It’s imperative that the Coalition honours its election promise to stop He Puapua and co-governance.
All plans to give tribal groups greater powers than other New Zealanders – including over our Conservation Estate – should be scrapped.
With an election commitment to “defend the principle that New Zealanders are equal before the law”, all legislation creating special rights for Maori should be regarded as discriminatory and unlawful.
That should also apply to the special provisions for Maori being created in the new Gene Technology Bill. Designed to update the way genetic modification is dealt with in this country, submissions on the Bill – see HERE – close February 17.
While concerns have been raised about labelling and food safety, the Bill – unbelievably – introduces a new Treaty “principle” in Clause 4: “This Act recognises and respects the Crown’s obligations under the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi…”
In spite of the Coalition’s pledge to remove Treaty “principles” from legislation, here they are creating new principles to give Maori greater rights than other New Zealanders!
This is co-governance – yet another example of He Puapua in action.
Does this signal the Coalition is now turning its back on its commitments to “Remove co-governance from the delivery of public services”, “Stop all work on He Puapua”, and “End race-based policies”?
Are those “commitments” more lies – like those we heard from Labour?
The point is this: Maori Supremacists are using race as a weapon to gain advantage over all other New Zealanders. Using the affirmative action provisions in the Human Rights Act, millionaire tribal leaders and their gravy train lawyers are peddling the disadvantage of anyone with a smidgeon of Maori blood, to fabricate claims of racial discrimination in order to gain race-based rights.
Isn’t it time this pipeline to endless appeasement through preferential treatment based on race, was closed down?
As we reflect on 185 years since the signing of the Treaty, we need to wake up to the uncomfortable reality that national unity and pride in our country are being undermined by tribal leaders. Driven by greed and self-interest, they are sabotaging race relations to destabilise society so they can seize control of the country.
The sooner the Coalition follows the lead of governments around the world and eliminates race and ethnicity from our Statute books, the sooner they can no longer be used as weapons to divide and conquer New Zealand.
Ironically it was Labour leaders like Walter Nash, Mick Savage and Norman Kirk who wanted Waitangi Day to be a day of celebration that belonged to everyone.
Instead, it has become a day of such hate and aggression that increasing numbers of New Zealanders are questioning whether we should be celebrating it at all.
*PLEASE NOTE:
If you are concerned about matters undergoing Parliamentary consultation, then please speak up. Politicians regard silence from the public as endorsement. They only recognise they are doing the wrong thing when they receive submissions and emails telling them so.
- Submissions on the Coalition’s proposal to give tribal interest greater control of the Conservation Estate ends on February 28 – full the details can be found HERE.
- A submission on DOC’s discussion document that has been prepared by Fiona Mackenzie can be viewed HERE.
- Submissions on the Gene Technology Bill close on February 17 – full details on submissions and the Bill can be found HERE.
- And if you would like to contact MPs or local Councillors to express your concerns, their email addresses can be found HERE.
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THIS WEEK’S POLL ASKS:
*Should Waitangi Day remain a public holiday?
*Poll comments are posted below.
*All NZCPR poll results can be seen in the Archive.
THIS WEEK’S POLL COMMENTS
| No – it should NOT be a public holiday any longer. All that we are doing is providing a platform for people trying to destroy our democracy. Repeal the law. | Donald |
| Most Kiwis are sick of the grandstanding and abuse from Maori activists. If it was a true day for all New Zealanders, we could keep it as a public holiday. But the way are going it has become a disgrace and should be scrapped. | Maurice |
| Most people like holidays so it should stay. | Brenda |
| We should not have a public holiday to recognise activism and attempts to distort our history and undermine our democracy. Abolish it! | Paul |
| Keep the day of recognition of the signing of the Treaty but remove the holiday – we have too many public holidays in this country as it is. | Stuart |